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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/22657840">Romance</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/darker_descent/pseuds/darker_descent'>darker_descent</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Symbruary 2020 [2]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Marvel (Comics), Marvel 616, Venom (Comics), Venom (Movie 2018)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Canon-typical references to cannibalism, Chocolate, F/F, Fluff, M/M, One Shot, Other, Romance, Symbruary, Valentine's Day, Venom Symbiote (Marvel) Likes Chocolate</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-02-11</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-02-11</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-04-28 15:00:29</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,089</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/22657840</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/darker_descent/pseuds/darker_descent</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Two short one-shots focusing on the romances that are Scream and Venom.</p><p>Posted for Symbruary 2020 Day 11: Romance</p><blockquote>
  <p>The sunset symbiote didn’t know love.</p>
  <p>It had been born in a lab. It had been born with coldness. It hadn’t been born like a human, or even one of its own kind.</p>
  <p>Most humans were born out of love. Most symbiotes, apparently, were not.</p>
</blockquote>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Donna Diego/Scream Symbiote, Eddie Brock/Venom Symbiote</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Symbruary 2020 [2]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1630045</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>7</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>23</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>SYMBRUARY</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Sunset</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>The Scream symbiote considers matters of the heart.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>The sunset symbiote didn’t know love.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It had been born in a lab. It had been born with coldness. It hadn’t been born like a human, or even one of its own kind.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Most humans were born out of love. Most symbiotes, apparently, were not. They were born into hatred and fear; into an unwavering quest for revenge against their creator for bringing them into the world. Despite its unnatural birth, its life had began similarly: its first mission was to kill its parent, Venom. Or maybe in this case, parents, plural. It knew, in the vaguest sense, that Venom was a creature made truly of two souls, bonded through a love that went against the odds of nature.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It wished sometimes that Venom had decided to assist its forced offspring. Maybe then it would know love.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It knew pain and violence. It knew the shrieks within its host’s head every day, quieted by medication and the occasional trip to an office where she would lie on a couch and relay her woes. Therapy, humans called it. A service for those who knew heartache.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The symbiote knew heartache, though it didn’t have a heart of its own. It coiled itself tightly around the beat of its host’s most precious organ.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Donna Diego. Scream.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The symbiote knew Donna.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It knew that Donna looked at it like it was the world. It knew she admired the ever-changing black-red-yellow pattern of its mass. It knew she saw a tendril weaving around her waist not as a threat but as a comfort; it knew that when she saw the sun burn low over the horizon she always thought of Scream; it knew that with every colorful shift of their shared form she saw art in the snake-like movements of Pollock-esque patterns (Donna called him a hack, but she enjoyed Scream’s patterns).</span>
</p><p>
  <span>And she knew that when she laughed, loud and open-mouthed and maybe slightly obnoxious, it wrapped tighter around her. She knew that it enjoyed combing through her hair with their long claws, and not because it felt like silk to the touch but because it was </span>
  <em>
    <span>Donna’s</span>
  </em>
  <span>. She knew that it visited her dreams, shapelessly reaching out to her every night in vivid and lucid scenes that she could remember perfectly the next day. She knew that she was its home.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The sunset symbiote knew home. And pain, and recovery, and touch, and </span>
  <em>
    <span>kill</span>
  </em>
  <span> and </span>
  <em>
    <span>nurture</span>
  </em>
  <span> and </span>
  <em>
    <span>Donna</span>
  </em>
  <span>.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It did not know love.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>But perhaps </span>
  <em>
    <span>they</span>
  </em>
  <span> did.</span>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Tradition</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>It's almost Valentine's Day.</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>set in movie canon, except symbiote doesn't have a name because that's a particular part of comic canon that i love</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <b>Valentine’s Day?</b>
</p><p>
  <span>“Huh?” Eddie said</span>
</p><p>
  <b>Look.</b>
</p><p>
  <span>Not of his own accord, his head swiveled to the side to stare head-on at a display window full of giant teddy bears, heart-shaped chocolates, and whatever other red-white-and-pink bullshit corporations could push out to capitalize on romance.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Oh, yeah,” Eddie said, scratching the back of his neck. “Valentine’s Day.”</span>
</p><p>
  <b>What is it?</b>
</p><p>
  <span>“It’s a holiday,” he explained, leaving his cynicism out of it for the moment.. “It’s about love, romance, shit like that.”</span>
</p><p>
  <b>An entire day for romance?</b>
</p><p>
  <span>Eddie shrugged. “Yeah. I mean, it’s important to a lot of people.” He chuckled. “It also makes for a great marketing tool.”</span>
</p><p>
  <b>I see,</b>
  <span> they said. </span>
  <b>I recall you saying the same thing about Christmas.</b>
</p><p>
  <span>“Applies to a lot of holidays.”</span>
</p><p>
  <b>So does chocolate.</b>
</p><p>
  <span>“Oh, for sure. Chocolate’s a staple of Valentine’s Day.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>They hummed low in his stomach, the noise bordering on a growl. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He sighed dramatically. “Alright, alright,” he said, stepping into the shop.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>They milled around for a while. His symbiote was especially particular about chocolate, but after a while he had grown similarly fastidious in regards to their chocolate choices. He wasn’t exactly high on cash, but good chocolate settled their collective and unnamed craving more than shit chocolate. (He’d probably </span>
  <em>
    <span>kill</span>
  </em>
  <span> for some of the fancy stuff. In fact, it had been suggested to him a couple of times, but he would only cave if they ever encountered the specific scenario of a criminal stealing high-end chocolates…Which they unfortunately had not.)</span>
</p><p>
  <b>Yet,</b>
  <span> his symbiote said. They always seemed to tap into his thoughts at random moments. There was never a sense of predictability in when they would interject on his private musings, but he found he didn’t much mind anymore. Was that weird? Yeah, it definitely was, the more he thought about it.</span>
</p><p>
  <b>It is not weird! </b>
  <span>his symbiote insisted the more he thought about it.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Eddie rolled his eyes. “Maybe not by alien standards, but humans usually have a bit of alone time in relationships. You’re a little clingy.”</span>
</p><p>
  <b>I can’t help my nature, Eddie.</b>
</p><p>
  <span>He laughed. “Yeah, sure, buddy.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>After a bit more searching, he finally settled on a relatively cheap heart-shaped box of assorted chocolates.Thematically appropriate, within his price range, and with a strong enough scent that he could discern at least a few of them had peanuts. Yep, checked all his boxes.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>An oddly energetic employee scanned his items (he had picked up one of those little bug-eyed stuffed keychains, just as a morale booster for the continuation of his latest article). She grinned widely as she scanned his chocolates.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Getting these for anyone special?” she asked.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He stared at the box as she shook it slightly, like an actress displaying an as-seen-on-TV item. It was made with the type of plastic that shone in certain lights. Not in a beautiful way, or anything, just in that artificial way that a worn out tupperware container might. He looked down at his hands. There was a speck of blood on the bed of his nail, and for all anyone knew it could be his own — he </span>
  <em>
    <span>had</span>
  </em>
  <span> pulled a hangnail yesterday, which somehow still hurt like a bitch despite all the much more painful things he had gone through — but it was a leftover remnant of the jackass they’d eaten last night. Classic purse-snatcher scenario, straight out of a cartoon, complete with a helpless old lady and everything.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He looked back up at the girl, who was waiting expectantly (and awkwardly) for his response. He could see the smile beginning to slide off her face, replaced with a vague look of </span>
  <em>
    <span>what-the-fuck-is-up-with-this-guy?</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <b>She’s looking at us weird,</b>
  <span> his symbiote aptly pointed out. </span>
  <b>Say something before you get kicked out of the store!</b>
</p><p>
  <span>And suddenly he broke into a laugh, and for a moment the girl was silent, until she joined him, albeit uncomfortably and with a forced manner to her guffaws.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“So,” she said. “This <em>is</em> for someone special?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yeah,” Eddie said, reduced to a small chuckle. “Yeah, it is.”</span>
</p>
  </div></div>
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